‘There is going to be a disruption in how much affinity we have for brands’ – Sapient Nitro on the rise of connected devices

As connected devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) continue to make strides into our everyday lives, brands may risk losing affinity with consumers, as they begin to disappear into “the framework” of the connected web according Sapient Nitro’s experience design director Daniel Harvey.

Speaking to The Drum following a panel session at Digital Shoreditch 2015, Harvey warned that brand marketers will face an onslaught of new challenges as the IoT becomes more prevalent amongst brands and in society as a whole.

“I think marketing and brand marketers in particular are going to be challenged in part because of how invisible that web of everything around us will be,” he said. “So even right now with something like the Nest [wifi enabled programmable thermostats] the Nest was designed to be very much a beautiful object, the kind of thing that isn’t the dumb, white plastic box that you hide in a broom closet. Rather it’s something that you have on display in the hallway.

“But that’s still become something that you ignore nine times out of 10, so I think there is going to be a disruption in how much affinity we have for brands because they are just going to get meshed together in the framework that drives the internet of things.”

Daniel Fogg, founder and strategist at Graftt, a product strategy consultancy, agreed with Harvey but added that while it might appear that companies such as Samsung or a white goods manufacturer would be best placed to create, an connected fridge, for example, it is in fact the “service layer” that will emerge most important.

“For things like the connected fridge perhaps it would be better developed by someone like Tesco or Sainsbury’s,” he said. “You are going to see these new products creating new service categories and new layers of service in order to deliver things to people in the way that they want them.”

Watch the full interview above, which also features Jessi Baker, CEO, Provenance and digital technology designer Ross Atkins, director of Ross Atkins Associates discussing the evolving role of the brand marketer in the connected age.